At the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival on April 12, Moore set the record straight about criticisms regarding the new rules. He appeared via Skype in a brown hoodie -- degrading into a pixelated Yoda when the Internet stream slowed -- and explained why he believes the rule changes are (mostly) for the good.

#1. Change Is Obviously Needed

"If I said to you that Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Woody Allen, none of them have never ever won an Oscar -- that would seem really bizarre wouldn't it?" Moore said.

"Now, let me say this: Frederick Wiseman, the Maysles Brothers, D.A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus, Steve James. I could go down a very long list of people who never won an Oscar, and many, like Fred Wiseman, who've never been nominated. How can that happen? How could these godfathers of our genre -- modern documentary -- never have even been nominated or won?"

#2 The Old System Was Weird, Insular, and Corrupt

"For many years a small committee watched the documentary films. The committee was made up of volunteers from the Academy. They were not documentary filmmakers, and they were not from the documentary branch. And so they would sit there with the 16mm projector running and -- after 10 minutes, 20 minutes, everybody had a little flashlight and they hit the flashlight, and they would stop the projector and they wouldn't watch the rest of the film," Moore said.

"And Roger Ebert about 20 years ago did a story about one of the reasons why this was. . . There was a documentary distributor on the committee. And according to Ebert, a third and half of all nominated films were distributed by this documentary distributor who sat on the selection committee. In fact, in the year of 'Roger & Me,' 1989, three of the five nominees were distributed by this man's company."

#3 The New Process Will Be More Democratic

"When I was elected to the Board of Governor for my branch, this was one of the things I really wanted to fix. I said, 'We should create a democracy movement within the documentary branch of the Oscar. We should bring democracy to our branch, meaning the entire branch should vote on who the five nominees are going to be, and then the entire Academy -- all 6,000 members -- should pick the winner from those five nominees,'" Moore said. "It was decided it was time to let everyone vote."

#4 More Documentaries Will Get Seen

"We're setting up procedures to guarantee that every [submitted] film does get seen by someone,” Moore said. “And I asked the Academy if they would shoulder the expense of sending every qualified movie to every member of the documentary branch and they've agreed to do it. So, in other words, if you've made a documentary, you want to submit it this year and your film will be sent to all 160 members of the documentary branch," Moore said.

"You can submit and will submit your documentary films when they are released throughout the year. So, your film comes out in June, we will get your movie in July. This way, no one's going to have to watch 100 movies in December, like the Oscars work now. We're going to watch them throughout the year."

#5 Bigger Movies Will Benefit (and They Should)

"I know that people have said, 'The little films will be overlooked.' But actually the history of the Oscar for documentaries is that the little film has not been overlooked; it's the larger film that has been overlooked.

"And the joke 15, 20 years ago was that if you were critically acclaimed, if you got good notices, if you were thought well of by the audience as one of the best documentaries of the year, that would be the kiss of death. You were guaranteed of not even being nominated. It was a weird feeling like, 'Oh my god, I've got all they great reviews -- oh, we're screwed!'"